Melanoma Awareness Month: Opportunities to Make a Difference

Melanoma Awareness Month, held in May each year, is a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness of the dangers of melanoma, the importance of early detection, and the many ways to practice sun safety. From talking about sun safety to your friends and family, taking the Skin Check Pledge, posting about melanoma on social media, or highlighting prevention strategies in your organization newsletter—there are many ways we can all take part and make a difference!

For example, BJ’s Wholesale Club is hosting their second annual Melanoma Awareness Campaign in partnership with MRA. The campaign featured a reverse of point sale that allows vendors to be recognized for their donation to MRA. They also developed an extensive promotional plan that included full-page ads and an educational email distributed to their six million members, massive signage in all 225 stores, and social media messaging throughout the month of May. Last year, BJ’s donated $800,000 to MRA! Learn more about the research initiative that BJ’s Wholesale Club supported here.

Other partners, from Allure Magazine, First Aid Beauty, and Tri Sirena are also finding meaningful ways to support MRA and to bring needed awareness to their customers. Find out more about these partners here.

It wouldn’t be Melanoma Awareness Month without LFFM. Later this month on May 23, more than one thousand professionals from the leveraged finance, private equity, and investment communities will rally together in the fight against melanoma at the seventh annual Leveraged Finance Fights Melanoma(LFFM) benefit and cocktail party. The event, held each year in the Rockefeller Center’s summer garden, raised over $8.6 million in it’s first six years to advance the Melanoma Research Alliance’s global research programs. Learn how to register, sponsor, or volunteer for the event here.

Most important for Melanoma Awareness Month, make sure you’re empowered with the facts. Melanoma is the deadliest of skin cancers. In fact, more than 91,000 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma this year—roughly one person every six minutes, and incidence of the disease continues to rise. Thanks in part to research funded by the Melanoma Research Alliance, the prognosis for people diagnosed with late-stage disease is improving dramatically, but people diagnosed with late-stage melanoma still face long odds. The need for further research into better methods of preventing, diagnosing, and treating melanoma is as urgent as ever. Knowledge is power, do you have the melanoma facts you need to stay sun safe?